


Caveat Emptor

by minkmix



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Disillusionment, Kid Fic, Wee!chesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 19:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15541125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkmix/pseuds/minkmix
Summary: Dean & Sam trudge through the snow to return an unwanted purchase.





	Caveat Emptor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sven the Beta Fish. RIP (our time was brief but pure) (hm](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sven+the+Beta+Fish.+RIP+%28our+time+was+brief+but+pure%29+%28hm).



Spending October in sight of the border to the great white north felt like deep January in any other civilized place.

Overhearing a few conversations amongst the locals Dean had listened to old guys remark that it was starting off to be a nice mild ‘spell’. He wasn’t quite sure what the hell a ‘spell’ was composed of but if this was a preview he'd already seen enough. This crap called for a rigged vote next time his father was awake enough to count his kid’s enthusiastically waving hands. Autumn was supposed to be a crisp hint of the sun’s declining cant on the horizon and clear brisk skies.

The mild months of fall weren't supposed to dump enough snow to bury you alive.

Crunching through knee high slush, it didn’t take long for his jeans to soak through and his sneakers to feel like they were laced to a couple of blocks of ice. When his hand closed on the shocking metal handle of the shop door, Dean felt his exposed skin stick to its frosty surface for a second. For a moment of true worry, he wondered what the actual winter was going to be like.

The only open store was heavy with the scent of burnt coffee, loose tobacco and the vague remnants of a soapy floor cleaner. The black rubber welcome mat was a perfect place to beat most of the crusty snow off his pants. Stomping a few times to get his blood flowing back into his numb feet, he watched his brother tug at his multi-layered reinforced wrapping with a futile desperation.

“I-I’m hot.”

Sammy was a never ending fount of simple phrases that quickly and succinctly relayed his status and what he expected his brother to do about it. I’m hungry. I’m sleepy. I have to go to the bathroom. I just went to the bathroom. I’m bored. I’m over here. I’m not over there. Dean sometimes wished most things in life had the same helpful commentary on their current condition. He’d never incinerate a single tater tot or fish stick again with that kind of relentless narration.

But this latest grievance came as no surprise. To preemptively counter the opposite complaint he had spent a laborious extra thirty minutes wrestling his brother into a thermal, three T-shirts, a turtle neck, a sweater and one of his own flannels. Even with what appeared to be full on cooperation, getting clothing on a distracted six year old still felt like trying to get a pissed off cat into a bucket of boiling acid. The shabby winter coat wouldn’t even zip up over it all. The hood tied just tight enough that Sam’s vision wouldn’t be impaired enough for self navigation. It had done more than the trick for the long walk down the deserted avenues of the town. Even though the snow was blowing horizontal, the only peep out of Sam during the mile hike was a momentary plea to stop at a questionably frozen pond of tantalizing fun. With one utterly dishonest promise that they’d make it their prime goal on the way back, the trip went along unhindered.

The excessive layering was great for the blistering artic winds but the inside of the convenience store was like a sauna. The temperate humidity perfectly fit the needs of the tank top clad owner leisurely smoking a cigarette behind the counter. Sam anxiously tried to flap his well insulated arms to put some added emphasis on his distress. With all the extra padding he couldn’t even rest his limbs comfortably down at his sides. Dean thought his brother’s sweaty face might look a little flushed and he supposed the unsteady sway to his step might be caused by an overheating situation. Cars did it all the time so he didn’t see why a person couldn’t suffer the same ailment. However, he didn’t have a half an hour to unpeel something that would have to get right back on again.

“We’re goin’ in a sec.” Dean said. “Wait over there.”

With one hard tug, he loosened the cinched hood so Sam could at least see the glories of the cluttered three aisle shop they had taken such pains to trek to. Shoving his brother in the direction of the magazine stand, he unzipped his own coat when he realized he’d also made the sickening rapid transition from freezing to sweating. Catching the colorful sight of comic books, Sam teetered in his haste but noisily caught himself on a sturdy newspaper stand.

The guy watching the small televised static of a ballgame looked up at the ruckus and frowned.

As most adults did, the man did a cursory scan for some visible parental unit accompanying what appeared to be two young unattended patrons in a store filled with things that could break. Upon not finding any guardians of legal age, he curiously observed Dean approach the register. Forgoing the usual formalities between a customer and the service staff, he pulled out the soda cup he had tucked in his jacket. It slid out from the deep inner lining, the opaque plastic lid bent but still firmly intact. The waxed paper was vaguely warm with his body heat. During the entire walk he’d kept one icy hand on it to make sure none of the water sloshed or spilled in any way. Tapping the ash of the cigarette onto the floor, the man considered the cup before lifting it up to get a better look at its contents.

The small gold fish inside abruptly fluttered in agitation like someone had just flipped on the lights and yelled surprise.

“What’s this?”

“Returnin’ it.” Dean curtly explained.

“You sure you bought it here?”

Dean was well accustomed to having the grown ups of his world believe his IQ equaled the number of years he had been walking the planet. He looked pointedly over to a large tank that sat directly to the side of the cash register. It had a sputtering air filter and a pile of neon pink gravel settled on its bottom. Besides one algae covered plastic plant attempt at foliage, the cloudy water held several tiny fish. They were hovering in a nervous clump by the surface fall of bubbles and looked exactly like the one in Dean’s soda cup. The man shrugged with a sheepish acknowledgement that his attempt of avoiding a possible refund had been soundly thwarted for the time being.

“Okay, what’s wrong with it?”

Dean knew he had to have some reason or he probably wouldn’t get his three bucks back. He shifted in place uneasily. Of course he could have only dropped a dollar for the normal kind but the ones for three dollars had a fancy tail that kind of looked like a fan. He had sat up all night staring at that damn fish swimming around its new home and couldn’t come up with one bad fishy quality to justify a complete reimbursement. Nonetheless, it had to go back whether he could conjure a story for why or not.

“The thing is…” He nudged the cup around with his hands. “There’s nothing real wrong with it. It swims fine. It eats. I-I haven’t seen it sleep but I’m not sure they even do that—”

“So what’s the problem—hey! Kid! Off the coolers!”

Checking over his shoulder, Dean saw that his brother had managed to get half way into the floor freezer that was filled with individually wrapped ice cream and bags of ice. He thought it was probably a good thing he’d almost gotten all the way in there. It might stave off the impending heatstroke for at least another solid five minutes. He turned his attention back to the pressing issue at hand.

“Can I be honest with you?” Dean ventured hesitantly.

He didn’t confide in complete strangers, well, ever… but this dude with the half hearted graying comb over and a bottle of orange Fanta seemed like the kind of soul that might be sympathetic to his dilemma. The man seemed surprised but dimly intrigued by the timid request. He crushed out his smoke and sat back on his stool in a gesture of open communication.

“I don’t like it.” Dean admitted with a scratch at his head.

“Oh.” The man waved to the other candidates glinting gold in the sickly tank luminescence. “You can pick another one if you want?”

Dean listened to the gracious offer and gnawed at his lower lip. He blew at his snow damp bangs and tried to work around the knot in his gut that was telling him to make up something about a highly contagious mad carp disease. Owning genuine legitimacy was supposed to set you free but all it made Dean feel was unimaginative and largely incompetent. Going against everything he’d been ever taught, he clenched his jaw and decided to say what had to be said.

The absolute truth.

“Fish are boring, sir.”

“Boring?” The guy repeated.

“Yeah!” His simmering frustration suddenly rose at the immobile aquatic vertebrate in the super size double gulp. “All it does is swim around like its getting somewhere but its not? And then when you feed it waits forever until it even sees there’s food and then all it does is stare at it. I played some music and it just sat there. I talked to it and it just sat there. I even tried making it happy by giving it a real live kicking moth and it didn’t even attack the damn—“

The man loudly cleared his throat to make Dean put the brakes on his tirade of the cruddy nature of disenchantment. Mildly humiliated by his outburst, he swiftly became interested in reading the labels of the small green vials of ginseng with coils of cartoon dragons on the caps.

“I got to ask ya, kid?” The man asked in all sincerity. “What was it that you were expecting?”

Dean continued the awkward silence. His gaze moving to candy colored disposable lighters, a display of Blistex, and then a slotted box of mini horoscope scrolls in every somber shade of the rainbow. Most of them were soothing but Aquarius was always an obnoxious bright blue. Like nuclear pool water.

The guy swirled the goldfish around in the cup a few times before begrudgingly giving a nod. Without much ceremony he dumped the thing over right back into the tank in which it had been purchased. Slightly disoriented from the unexpected luge ride, the small fish quickly reunited with its taciturn brethren under the hissing pump. The register chimed and rang as it opened and closed.

“Here ya go.”

Dean came close to saying something about the four shiny quarters that were being offered in exchange for a slightly used goldfish. Taking them up off the plastic covered festive array of scratch offs, he figured that it was more than he deserved for being so dumb anyway. The gross smelly flake food had been even more money wasted. At least the rest of the endeavor had been for free. The chipped flower vase that substituted nicely for a bowl had been found unwanted in the trash. The decorative scenery he’d obtained was the only rock to be found in the motel parking lot that hadn’t been buried by the plows.

Looking back at the tank one last time, he was exceedingly relieved to find he couldn’t tell which one had been momentarily his very own. Finding no one by the ice cream or the comic books, he finally located his brother next to a rotating rack of sunglasses. Dean had interrupted the systematic process of trying on any reachable pair. Sammy regarded him enigmatically from behind dark impenetrable circles, the lenses tinted deep pink with a faux designer label in a tiny sparkle of rhinestones on its frame.

He yanked them off Sam’s face and made to return them to their place.

“Nooo—!”

“Shhh.” Dean warned.

He paused and glanced warily down the aisle. The guy behind the register was now dually occupied by his telephone and the steady defeat of the New York Yanks under the tragically preordained Red Sox. Sam’s flustered outrage abruptly diffused when he saw the glasses slip into his brother’s pocket. Dean shrugged to himself. While they were already committing petty larceny, he might as well pick up some lunch. Perusing the aisle, he grabbed up a few hefty bags of M&Ms, some whip lengths of Slim Jim, a huge hunk of cellophane wrapped coffee cake and a couple of bananas. Eyeing the room left in the back of Sammy’s parka, Dean thought he should consider later on if the lazy fall of the storm was going to keep getting worse. Maneuvering his brother into place, he stuffed in a few boxes of Kraft, some instant pudding and a can of green beans.

It was time to go.

He took one last deep breath of boiler raked air before pushing open the glass doors again. For a few seconds the temperature drop was a relief after the stuffy confines of the convection oven they had been standing in. But that didn’t last too long. Blissful shifted quickly to painful. Dean’s ungloved hands shook as he made sure to cinch Sam’s hood back up so practically nothing was exposed.

“I liked Jeremy.” His brother announced from under the muffle of faux fur trim.

He watched Sam carefully fasten the large sunglasses over his face and suddenly saw the wisdom in their ridiculous design. Even if they seemed more likely to be on some corny movie star lady posing in those newspaper magazines, they sure probably did a great job of cutting that blistering cold that slowly froze your face solid. Dean shoved his hands into his coat pockets and bent his head down to avoid the brutal feel of the wind. Finding the traffic light that would lead them in the right direction, he starting following his own tracks already half covered by more snowfall.

“Who the hell is Jeremy?”

Dean couldn’t see his brother’s eyes but he knew he was rolling them. Oh. Right. It hadn’t ever occurred to him to name the thing. It would figure Sammy would go ahead and name it without letting anyone else know.

“Maybe we can get a Jeff next.” Sam suggested as he tried to keep up.

“What’s a Jeff?”

“A cactus.”

Dean had to admit that it wasn’t such a bad idea. He knew what to expect from a spiked plant that sat around all day and didn’t even want anything to drink. It might even survive long trips in the car and the intermittent crushing that everything they owned inevitably received. Until then, if he wanted to toss a Frisbee and expect something to dash off to exuberantly catch it, he was out of luck.

He glanced back at his brother who had somehow happily acquired a gigantic icicle.

Well, maybe for another couple years.

 

>(((">


End file.
